Leadership

Warren Bennis, a business school professor at University of Southern California for 35 years and the author of 30 books on leadership, died last week at the age of 89. The founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at USC's Marshall School of Business, Bennis was known as the "dean of leadership gurus," the Los Angeles Times writes.

His seminal 1989 book On Becoming a Leader, is required reading for any businessperson. Bennis mentored CEOs, trained countless soon-to-be leaders while teaching at Harvard, MIT, and USC, and advised U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, The New York Times reports.

Although Warren was by nature a kind and open person, he didn’t hesitate to take on sensitive issues and to swim against the tide. A good example is his 2005 article in Harvard Business Review as to why business schools had lost their way. This wasn’t his main subject of research and focus, bit he spoke up about it in a powerful and courageous way.

Warren's life and writings epitomized Peter Drucker’s view of management as one of the liberal arts. “‘Liberal’ because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; ‘art’ because it is practice and application… management will increasingly be the discipline and the practice through and in which the ‘humanities’ will again acquire recognition, impact, and relevance.”